About Ymt, a magazine about Visual Communication

‘The design of Ymt this year was in the capable hands of second year students, class of 2018–2021, of Visual communication here at KMD. Theirs is the honour of conceptualising and giving form to the magazine‘s contents. One is that KMD Moves—the arts move, which is elaborated on further on KMD‘s website, if you like. The other is the theme of this volume, which is a kind of search for unity
—a common cause?—within the field of Visual communication. These two ideas are why this volume is full of questions about education and pedagogy, and why it looks at how to move and be moved.

The designers of this second Ymt chose to meet the strategy to move with a response that asks whether that which moves might require a direction that is clear to all, that might thereby be contested. And they chose to meet questions about unity, in Visual communication design education and within the whole field of knowledge, by responding with questions of their own, in the hope that there will be more questions in return. They, and Ymt’s other content contributors, openly share their thoughts with you. Their contributions are hereby dropped into the great current of human thought and remain in search for more knowledge, more questions, a further unfolding.’ (Ísleifsdóttir / Huus, 2020).

Ymt is an experimental publication about Visual Communication as a field of knowledge. Ymt is available in a limited edition print and is open source online here.

It is available on Facebook as ymt magazine, and on Instagram as ymtmag. Ymt is in English.

Ymt is edited by Dóra Ísleifsdóttir and Åse Huus. Peter Jones and Victoria Squire, editors of Message—an international academic journal about Graphic communication design—are on Ymt’s Advisory board.

Ymt is created in an Editorial design and visual identity course with second year BA students of Visual communication, who work with content from academic staff at KMD, MA alumni, and contributors from the field in the Nordic and Baltic region and the makers’ wider network.

Teachers in the Editorial design and visual identity course in which Ymt is made are Dóra Ísleifsdóttir, Åse Huus, Magnus Nyquist, and Albert Cheng-Syun Tang 湯承勳. Gustav Kvaal, Hilde Kramer, Charles Michalsen, Ingrid Rundberg and Sunniva Storlykken Helland have been visiting teachers. Jan Edgar Hartvedt from Bodoni printers has been printing consultant in the course.

Ymt is designed and produced by second year bachelor students in their third semester of study. Ymt contains what has recently been questioned in our field in this academy and region, with contributions from alumni students from the year in MA Design, research projects by academic staff, and original content by second year BA students in the course Editorial design and visual identity. Ymt is not prescribed when a new student group starts to work on each volume. The student-designers are encouraged to explore all avenues of investigation into how the content (including their own contributions to the contents) may best be served through editorial design and publication means.

Ymt introduces and invites students to design journalism, editorship, and authorship, and to how the nuanced visual language of text and image may be employed in a field which requires multimodal articulation. The making of Ymt creates a situation for students, who’s forte is not to write (or even talk), where autonomy is stimulated and ideas and thoughts are voiced in the visual language and through design writing. The students are invited into a creative conversation—professional dialogue and discourse—within a flat democratic structure of hierarchy. The students can contribute content to Ymt, but their main mission is to read and internalise contributions by academics, practitioners, and MA students and alumni, and Research fellows and convey these authors’ meaning through the design.

Ymt 2, in the printed version, was published in an edition of 200.
Contents of Ymt 2, published in 2020:

●    ‘Meaning in the current’, editorial, Dóra Ísleifsdóttir and Åse Huus.
●    ‘Meaning making’, Åse Huus.
●    ‘Visual communication design research’, Peter Jones.
●    ‘Questions of the “local” in Visual communication design’, Arja Karhumaa.
●    ‘Futures of practice’, Johanna Lewengard.
●    ‘Letters – Bodies: Historical content of typography’, Aušra Lisauskienė.
●    ‘What to put in the communication designer’s handbag’, Lars Hoff-Lund.
●    ‘Exchange students be like’, Klara Kapprell and Patricia Pfeiffer.
●    ‘The design students favourite question’, Vilde Takla.
●    ‘Affluenza – Center for overconsumption’, Jamille Faller, Sammy Hemerik, Bo Knoblauch, and Julian Schlicht.
●    ‘Scenes from a stream’, Sunniva Storlykken Helland.
●    ‘All I have to do and (almost) everything I have done (so far)’, Ingrid Rundberg.å
●    ‘Inside the narrative’, Gustav Kvaal and Torkell Berndsen.
●    ‘Drawing by number’, Käte-Elin Madsen.
●    ‘My nature’, Käte-Elin Madsen

ISSN 2535-6399 (print) ISSN 2535-6402 (online)
Ymt, print and online, is archived and available through the Norwegian National Library.

Ymt has received support from Grafill, Papyrus, Bodoni, and from funds within the University of Bergen and KMD.

Ymt is published by Visual communication, Design, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen © Ymt 1, 2019 and Ymt 2, 2020*

* Publisher‘s disclaimer, and a statement about authors‘ ownership
Each contributing author has sole responsibility for the content of his or her article, including all text, images, and references. Each author is sole owner of their contribution as submitted. The designed and published contribution is owned by KMD Ymt‘s publisher. Any errors that result from the editorial design of the magazine are due to it being designed as BA coursework assignment and KMD, including all staff, does not accept responsibility for any errors or consequences thereof. Contributors, authors, are aware of this risk when submitting to the magazine, and submission is a declaration of understanding and agreement.